COURAGE

Social Justice: Eric Yamamoto creates a framework for conciliation

Anger and
confusion about race has been called Americas number one problem.
University of Hawai'i Law School
professor Eric Yamamoto thinks so. Hes seen some Americans retaliate
against fellow citizens of Arabic heritage in their anger over the September
terrorist attack on the United States. He fears that strict national security
measures could trample on civil liberties. He knows its happened
beforeto Japanese Americans during World War II.

For 15
months during the early 80s, Yamamoto volunteered on the legal team
attempting to overturn the wartime internment conviction of Fred Korematsu.
The team succeeded, and that decision along with a 1987 case swept out
the legal foundation of the WWII Supreme Court decision that justified
internment as military necessity. As a result, Congress passed the 1988
Civil Liberties Act, which called for a presidential apology and reparations
for Japanese Americans who had been interned. Yamamoto received the Korematsu
Civil Rights Award for his efforts. The lesson: We must not scapegoat
other people. Both U.S. citizens and our courts need to be vigilant about
protecting civil liberties while addressing genuine threats to national
security.

Yamamoto
addresses that topic in his books, Race, Rights and Reparation: Law
and the Japanese-American Internment and Interracial Justice: Conflict
and Reconciliation in Post-Civil Rights America. The latter, named
one of the top 10 books on human rights, social justiceand civil rights
published in North America, deals with interracial discriminationone
group using social, economic or political structures to subordinate another.
The wounds such discrimination inflictsinterracial justice grievances,
Yamamoto calls themare being overlooked in the courts fervor
to outlaw race consciousness.

The
majority of the justices say that to analyze historical and current racial
differences can actually damage the nations interest in racial harmony,
he says. The court is mistaken. We are seeing more, not less, interracial
tension across America. The anger it generates exists in areas like
housing, education, business and law. Because the courts turn a blind
eye, old wounds remain open.

Racial
discrimination isnt motivated purely by racial dislike, but more
by self-interest and past actions, Yamamoto explains. We have
to find out what justice grievances lie beneath the surface of the immediate
conflict and set about healing the wounds.

To do that,
Yamamoto proposes a four-point framework of racial conciliationrecognition,
responsibility, reconstruction and reparations. Its not a
magic formula. Its a method and a language for asking questions
and moving the process forward. People have to learn how to do this. Its
going to take some disciplined and serious work. The courts should
encourage discussions about racial justice grievances, but the law itself
is too narrow, so most of the process must take place outside a legal
context, he says.

Surprising
words from a lawyer, but Yamamoto didnt plan to enter law when he
majored in humanistic studies in UHs experimental 70s New
College. The turbulent timesVietnam war protests, the breakdown
of communities, stirrings of the Native Hawaiian movementand discussions
with his father, a UH professor who taught race relations, profoundly
influenced the thoughtful young man immersed in Nietzsche and Zen Buddhism.
He decided to study law at Berkeleys Boalt Hall to shape how
communities would be. After the Korematsu case, Yamamoto joined
a Hawaii law firm. He also served on the boards of the Legal Aid
Society of Hawaii and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation and
was counsel to Alu Like and the Womens Health Center. In 1985, he
joined the UH law school faculty. Hes assisted Native Hawaiian Homelands
trust beneficiaries, sovereignty activists and the Spark
M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace. Hes received the UH Presidential
Citation for Excellence in Teaching twice and been named Outstanding Professor
of Law three times. This spring, he will hold the Haywood Burns Chair
for Civil Rights at the City University of New York.

Yamamoto
prefers to remain in the background. Sometimes having less of a
profile makes it easier to help people accomplish their goals, he
says. Still, he hopes his framework will get people talking to each other
about racial justice. It can only make our country stronger,
he says.

As a University of Hawaii professor of anatomy and reproductive biology, Milton
Diamond teaches neuroanatomy and sexology. But his international notoriety
resulted from what he calls a simple search for evidence.

people think there has to be something strange about me to study sex,
says Diamond, who directs the medical schools Pacific Center for
Sex and Society and lectures worldwide. Personally, I wonder why
more people arent studying sex. Its so intrinsic to so many
aspects of our lives.

A graduate
of Bronx High School of Science and college ROTC, Diamond pursued anatomy,
endocrinology and experimental psychology at the University of Kansas.
In 1967 colleagues asked him to help start UHs John A. Burns School
of Medicine. Diamond and his wife thought the islands would be a good
place to raise their four daughters. He found it a good place to workwriting
several books, developing PBSs award-winning Human Sexuality
series and contributing to the American Medical Associations handbook
on sexual problems.

A few years
ago, Diamonds investigation of what he calls the John/Joan
case thrust him into the limelight. The 1960s case involved a 7-month-old
twin whose penis was severely burned by the electrocautery instrument
used during circumcision. The boys parents contacted psychologist
John Money, a leader in the field of gender identity at Johns Hopkins
University, who counseled them to raise their son as a girl. Money believed
a childs sexual identity is determined by the appearance of the
genitals and the childs upbringing. Its the nature/nurture
debate, says Diamond. Nurture advocates believe that if youre
raised (figuratively) in a blue room you become a boy and in a pink room,
a girl. The only problem is, that theory doesnt work.

The child
underwent surgery to remove his testes and fashion female genitals. His
parents were instructed to raise him unambiguously as a girl. In journal
articles and a book, Money described behavior so normally that of
an active little girl and so clearly different by contrast from the boyish
ways of her twin brother. Time magazine reported the experiment
has apparently succeeded. Skeptical, Diamond called for evidence
in various publications.

The medical
establishment embraced Moneys conclusions. Surgical reassignment
of sex for a variety of reasons, including cases where the penis was considered
too small (less than 2.5 centimeters), became standard medical practice.
Diamond kept digging. In 1994 he contacted British Columbia psychiatrist
Keith Sigmundson, in charge of John/Joans treatment under Moneys
direction. Sigmundson knew the sex conversion hadnt worked. Unaware
of her history, Joan had refused to wear dresses, hated make-up and fought
like a boy. She was banned from the girls restroom for standing
to urinate. At 14, she decided to live as a male. Sigmundson hadnt
challenged Johns Hopkins. He thought that if it wasnt working,
it was his fault, Diamond says.

Sigmundson
put Diamond in touch with John/Joan, by then a married man struggling
with psychological scars. In 1997 they presented their evidence in an
article on implications of sex reassignment in the Archives of Pediatrics
and Adolescent Medicine. This time the medical establishment listened.
Diamond addressed the American Academy of Pediatrics. I expected
them to throw rocks at me because I was basically telling them that what
theyd been doing for the past 40 years was wrong, he says.
Instead, 30 seconds of stunned silence gave way to applause.

If
you change someones gender as an infant, youre doing something
fundamental to them. As they grow up theyre living with incongruities
that dont make any sense to them, and they have no way of dealing
with their feelings. Many contemplate suicide. Diamond says as many
as 200 pediatric sex reassignments were taking place annually in the United
States due to damaged or ambiguous genitals. About 1 child in every 2,000
is born with enough ambiguity that its externally noticeable. One
in every 100 has hidden ambiguityXXY or other sets of chromosomes
or combinations of ovaries and testes. Gonads produce hormones that
affect the brain, and its our brains that tell us whether were
male or female, he says. In most cases, theres a physical
reason why individuals might be unsure about their sex.

Yet doctors
must classify a childs gender at birth. Diamond offers three guidelinesdont
do surgery based only on genital appearance; do follow-up studies on the
success of sex-reassignment; eliminate secrecy. Yes, its disturbing
for someone to find out they have male chromosomes along with a vagina,
but keeping them in the dark is disturbing, too. People could deal with
the truth if told in the proper way and provided with counseling.

Since exposing
the failure of the John/Joan case, Diamond has received numerous international
honors and been interviewed on national TV. He served as president of
the International Academy of Sex Research, which encompasses physicians,
psychologists, sociologists and other scientists. You work for 40
years then youre an overnight success, he quips.